Hearing Dog Snow helps Wayne Wicklund with his work as a computer tech and webmaster.

In the International Assistance Dog Week newsletter, we’ve been asking people to share their stories of their dogs in the workplace. Anne Wicklund wrote in from Arizona about her husband Wayne’s hearing dog, Snow, and Snow’s successor, Snow Shadow. – I have to tell you how valuable our service dog is to my husband. He is always at his side – of course – and has saved his life many times. Our Snow passed in September and his successor Snow Shadow is only 10 months old and already bossing his dad around.

Wayne works from home and volunteers at our local Museum –he is webmaster for the website, tech for all their computers, and volunteers at the VA for Viet Nam Veterans. Wayne and Shadow attend numerous political functions locally and around the world and travel extensively

Snow Prince and Snow Shadow have inspired the writing and publication of two books: “My Ears Have a Wet Nose: Acquiring, Training & Loving a Hearing Dog,” and “I Have a Wet Nose . . . and I have a job,” an educational coloring book about service dogs. The next book will be published in 2014, which is a “Handbook for Service Dogs: The do’s and don’ts.”

Kathy Taylor and her CCI Hearing Dog Janet travel a lot for Kathy’s job as a System Designer-Engineer with CenturyLink

In the May issue of the International Assistance Dog Week newsletter, we asked people to share their stories of their dogs in the workplace.

Here is a story shared by Kathy Taylor. —————-From the moment I received my Hearing Dog Janet in the spring of 2008 from Canine Companions for Independence, we hit the road working as a team across the nation deploying business CPE (customer premises equipment) products for CenturyLink. I work in field operations as a System Designer-Engineer which requires extensive traveling to customer sites.

When the alarm goes off in the morning it’s a bouncing Labrador that greets me; if a co-worker should happen to knock on my hotel door I no longer miss the opportunity to meet for breakfast or perhaps join in going out as a group for dinner.

No longer do I have to sleep sitting up at night with my hearing aids in for fear of missing my early morning flight, for Janet will keep nudging me until I get up. Now I can rest peacefully knowing if the fire alarms should go off in the night, Janet will nudge me awake.

Also, while driving to customer sites, if Janet hears any police/fire or emergency sirens, she will nudge me. In May of this year while on a business trip in Alabama when tornados were moving thru the area, it was Janet that alerted me to the tornado sirens and led me from my third floor hotel room to safety.

While at home I no longer miss people ringing the door bell or knocking on the back door. Nor do I miss the oven timers, microwave timers, or dryer signals, as Janet will simply nudge me and lead me to the sound sources.

For the first time in my life I can now visit a doctor’s / dentist office and not have to scope the room out to sit facing the exam room hallway in order to watch for the assistant to call my name. I can now sit wherever I wish and read a magazine / book or simply watch the lobby TV. When my name is called, Janet will nudge my leg and sit up, wanting to lead me to the assistant who has called my name.

It may not sound like much but in the past, no matter how much I informed office employees, the message of my hearing impairment never quite made it to the person calling my name over and over again. My appointment has even been skipped because I failed to hear the office staff call my name, but not anymore, all because of Janet.